Qualcomm's Tricorder X-Prize: Mobile Redefining Medicine

PORTLAND, Ore. — Wearable medical sensors monitored with an app -- including disposable smart patches applied like a Band-Aid -- mark the beginning of the end for bulky, traditional medical instruments, Donald Jones, vice president of global strategy and market development at Qualcomm Life Inc., said at last week's MEMS Executive Congress in Napa, Calif.

"We are starting to see the disappearance of the medical device," Jones said. "The machine itself will be gone."

In his presentation, "Mobile and the Future of Health and Wellness," he described dozens of wearable accessories and instrumented patches that turn smartphones and tablets into medical diagnostic tools, with more on the way. He predicted that, by 2017, wearable sensors for health and wellness will surpass 170 million units per year.

Qualcomm Life is supporting the effort by putting together a ecosystem of partners covering all aspects of wearables for medical diagnosis and treatment. "At Qualcomm Life, we are committed to medical devices for patients to use. There are already enough accessories that you can do a complete physical exam with a smartphone."

Sotera Wireless' Visi Mobile performs all the monitoring functions of a hospital for patients, no matter where they are located.(Source: Sotera)

Qualcomm is also sponsoring the Qualcomm Tricorder X-Prize -- with a $10 million purse -- modeled on the famous Star Trek medical scanner that performed instant medical diagnoses. Dozens of teams worldwide are working to create a handheld device that can diagnose 15 diseases and record and transmit key health metrics. Jones cited Scanadu, headquartered at the NASA-Ames Research Park, as one of the entrants offering the first serious tricorders measuring blood oxygen levels, electrocardiogram, stress, heart rate, body temperature, blood oxygen level, pulse wave transit time, and more.

"By giving the patient a handheld lab, we are turning the patient into a doctor," he said.

Qualcomm is also working to provide the infrastructure to connect mobile health measurement devices to the cloud for multi-variable analytics. Its HealthyCircles venture provides a software-as-a-service model that connects healthcare professionals, caregivers, and their systems to patients and their families in an integrated, accessible, and interoperable system that monitors and manages treatment regimes remotely.

Jones cited other trends in this field. In "doctors prescribing apps," doctors have started advising their patients to download apps (for things like exercise and stress reduction) and use them at home. In "apps prescribing doctors," the app makes a preliminary diagnosis and then recommends the kind of specialist qualified to treat the malady. The patient can then use an app like ZocDoc to browse doctors with that speciality and book an appointment.

The Zio XT patch from iRhythm continuously records heart rhythms for up to 14 days to identify arrhythmias.(Source: iRhythm)

Finally, Jones said online services like Google's Helpouts will soon offer online video chats with healthcare professionals to help diagnose and treat maladies from the comfort of your easy chair.

Of course, this is the wave of the future in medicine. We already use mobile platforms for much of personal lives. One problem is that as we get more dependent on such devices for medical monitoring, this mobile platform will have to become much more robust.

The other side that is not often brought in such discussions is that our personal lifestyle, much of which is, or certainly can be, connected with our mobile platform, has an effect on our health. These should be integrated with the explicit health monitoring.

On such example is diabetes. It is very much connected to what, how much, and when, we eat. At the moment there's mobile apps such as 'Calorie Counter' where food intake can be logged and totaled. Restaurants often have online menus. All this can be integrated, such that what you order, portion size, etc, with medication dose and timing, along with real time glucose monitoring.

Life style, medical monitoring and record keeping should be integrated. Intelligent software monitoring can both alert the user, as well as medical staff, routine as well as urgent, situations.

@Bert22306 this sort of innovation should put individuals more in charge of themselves

You are right--the more we understand our own health condition, the more we can take charge of our own therapies, hopefully preventing problems before they become critical, rather than just jump on the bandwagon of the latest trend to deal with health problems after they pass the critical threshold.

If only we could persuade the health care industry to keep the data that they gather at such great expense and personal inconvenience. After coughing up an extra 50% for my eye exams to obtain retinal images to track any progressive damage through time, I was shocked when I contacted my eye doctor for an appointment after 5 years without any problems and was told that my medical records had been shredded because they were old. In my humble opinion, as long as we are alive our medical records should be kept intact. After we're gone, disposition of the records can be discussed (medical insights for our descendents) and debated (privacy and cost).

absolutely. There's a huge gap between what the medical industry is using and what is pheasible in terms of technology. Most that I've met with are having trouble with basic computer knowledge and are frankly scared of anything too new.

The more of this sort of innovation the better. Not for doctors, but for individuals.

Just today I read in the paper that tere's a new recommendation coming out that will double the number of people who will be coerced into taking cholesterol drugs like lipitor, to a whopping 1/3 of the population. That's freakin' insane. They keep lowering the threshold of high-drama antics, to scare their patients into becoming the infinite revenue stream for drug companies.

So, this sort of innovation should put individuals more in charge of themselves. I'm all for it.